Platinum Guild to increase ad spend during the festive season

Chennai: You find it inside automobile catalytic converters. And then you find it adorning the necks, ears, fingers of the really rich as opposed to the merely rich.

In both cases it cleans up — the fumes that come out of the exhaust in the first case and the wallet in the second — in India it costs anything between Rs2,000-2,500 per gram. While the price may make your heart skip a beat, it is used in life saving devices like pacemakers.

Of course we are talking about platinum — the most precious, costly and the rarest metal in the world.

Interestingly, the demand for platinum jewellery is on the rise in India. From 12 jewellers in 2000, today there are around 350 jewellers in the country who vend platinum jewellery says Vaishali Banerjee, manager-India, Platinum Guild India Pvt Ltd. And this tribe is increasing.

According to her, when Platinum Guild was launched six years ago, the metal was largely new to the jewellers. "We had to educate the retailer about the metal." But today the demand for this white metal jewellery is increasing.

Nearly 90 per cent of the white metal is produced in South Africa and Russia. While the US is the largest consumer of the metal, China, too, is one of the largest consumers of the metal. Interestingly, the Chinese are also trying out jewellery made out of palladium - another white metal that looks similar to platinum but far more cheaper.